102 ANIMALS OP NORTH AMERICA. 



destruction, thus increasing the proportion, already far too 

 great, of surviving males, and dooming the race to earlier 

 extinction. But the white man is by no means his only 

 destroyer. The Indian watches for him in every thicket ; 

 by every wooded brook-side, the calf that goes down to 

 quench his thirst, is unwittingly slain by an arrow through 

 his loins. The gray wolf lurks in every hollow, and sneaks 

 through every ravine, watching ravenously for some heed- 

 less cow some foolish calf some wounded or aged bull to 

 straggle to one side, or fall limpingly behind, where a spring 

 from his hiding place, a snap at the victim's ham-strings, 

 will leave nothing to chance but the appearance of some 

 hungry compatriot to claim a dividend of the spoil. But the 

 wolf and the Indian are not wantonly destructive, they kill 

 to eat, and stop when their appetites are glutted. Civilized 

 man alone kills for the mere pleasure of destroying the 

 pride of having killed. For thousands of years the wolf and 

 the Indian fed and feasted on the buffalo, yet the race multi- 

 plied and diffused itself from the Hudson and Delaware, to 

 the Columbia and Sacramento ; from the Ottawa and Sas- 

 katchewan to the Alabama and the Brazos. But civilized 

 man with his insatiate rapacity, and enginery of firearms has 

 been on his track, and already his range has shrunk to one 

 tenth its former dimensions, and the noble brute is palpably 

 doomed to early extinction. 



